August 22, 2011

The Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin at Madison dates to 1966. In 1970, following a four-week strike, the graduate students at Madison became the first T.A. union to win a contract. Over the years, the union -- affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers -- has been a leader in the drive to promote collective bargaining for graduate student workers.

Last week, after hours of debate, the union’s members voted not to seek state certification to continue to act as a collective bargaining agent. Union leaders said that the vote was a close one (they declined to reveal the totals), and taken with very mixed feelings by both those seeking to continue state certification and those arguing against. Those who carried the day argued that the new state law designed to limit the power of public employee unions made it impossible to operate effectively, and that the organization will be able to do more for T.A.s by not seeking to be certified as an official union.

Union leaders said that they couldn’t function well if they had to effectively be in a perpetual organizing drive for the annual union votes, and also if they had to pay annual fees to be certified. "Our membership was keenly aware of the sort of resources and energy it would take in order to hold on," said Adrienne Pagac, co-president of the union and a doctoral student in sociology at Madison....

The TAA was central to the protests that took place at the Capitol last February and March, as I summarized here. More here. A photo (by Meade) from March 1:

I love the spin they put on it (and their refusal to release the "close" vote totals). Big Labor desperately wanted all those young people cowed into Union membership, and the young people told them to fuck off. Now they spin their defeat as a new strategy. They live in a world where truth and reality never intrude.

I wonder how many members of Congress would be elected with that kind of requirement.

That kind of echos a comment from one of the union officials I read late last week. My initial thought is that if the members of Congress jobs depended on the vote, it wouldn't be that high at all. Panic can focus one's thoughts remarkably well.

Wouldn't they have had to get 50% + 1 Yes votes from All TAs, not just from all voting members? That's a pretty high bar.

But the fact that they won't release the election results suggests that they couldn't even win a majority of those who DID vote. Otherwise I think they'd be loudly denouncing those "unreasonable voting requirements" in the press.

Makes me wonder how many other noisy left-wing institutions are in fact deserted Potemkin villages built in the days of Roosevelt and LBJ, and propped up ever since by a friendly media, captive politicians, extorted funding, public indifference and ignorance, and the disorganization, reticence, and distraction of their natural enemies. Now is the time to redouble our efforts and really kick the Left hard while they're down. Imagine the country with no Davis-Bacon Act, for example, or a wall on the southern border, or an end to all affirmative action, or a national right to work law.

The STEM grads are there on TAs for a few years but once they figure out what they are going to do, and if they are any good at it, they get research assistantships.

Once they do, they are getting paid to do their OWN scientific research, not grading papers.

The grad students in the humanities are stuck with grading papers though.

So the STEM students dont feel the same need for a union that the humanities students do. Suppose there was a strike--the STEM students strike against THEMSELVES. And they know that the more they take out of the grant in salary, the less they can take out for other tings and the grant runs out sooner, because a grant only has so much money in it.

That's why if the grad students are unionized they have to seperate them out somehow. They don't all have the same interest.

"(Unionization at private colleges and universities is governed by federal labor law, and the National Labor Relations Board is currently considering the issue of collective bargaining of T.A.s. The union rights of public university T.A.s are determined at the state level.)"

I was a non-unionized TA at a private university -- free tuition plus a stipend (no benefits). I taught classes, created quizes, graded tests and papers and interacted with students. I was getting paid to learn the nuts and bolts of teaching at a university. I left that university with an advanced degree, some unique job skills and no student loans.

I didn't know I was supposed to feel oppressed. I guess I would have felt oppressed if I had been forced to hand my beer money to some "grad students" who had the time to run a union in addition to all the grad school work they were supposed to do.

The real lesson to learn from the failure of the unions, once the government doesn't coerce the payment of their dues, is that they can't survive. I have always maintained that if we had to pay our income taxes, FICA, Medicare tax, capital gains taxes et al at the end of the year by writing a check, our government would be the right size, and spending would not be a problem. However, once one gets used to the amount left over, and forgets the tremendous amount that is confiscated by withholding, it becomes less pressing than day to day issues.

My first academic job was as an assistant professor at Madison. I was put on some committee to evaluate the TA's for our department. The committee had on it TA's who had been around a while, a senior professor, a few department administrators, and me, a junior professor.

At some point we were discussing the second worst TA (in terms of ratings) but not the worst. I asked why were we not talking about the worst. I was told that he had passed his "probationary period" was guaranteed a TA position as long as he was a grad student. Since admins at Wisconsin are basically impossible to fire, and I just learned this was basically the same for grad students, I blurted out "Holy shit. I'm the only one in this room without tenure."

I have always maintained that if we had to pay our income taxes, FICA, Medicare tax, capital gains taxes et al at the end of the year by writing a check, our government would be the right size, and spending would not be a problem.

The newly-passed Wisconsin law on public employees unions is a success. Unions have always taken for granted that once their members are in thrall and locked into paying perpetual dues, there shall be no second thoughts about membership - despite what the members might think. But see how they now vote, under the new law! This is what Democracy looks like!

The preferred Union principle has a direct parallel in the European Union: you're going to vote again and again on this Lisbon Treaty until you get it right, then no more of this silly voting. The EU needs a counterpart of Governor Walker to unleash real democracy there.

What a beautiful day! First I get to chuckle about the collapse of a bogus "union" and then I learn that a key actor is a doctoral student in the laughable, intellectually barren and wholly useless field of sociology -"would you like fries with that?" All is well.

I was a TA at UW when the union got their power to collect dues (on TAs that came to the university after the vote). As a Chemist, my primary view of the union was the union holding my pay and benefits hostage to keep the physical science and engineering TAs from being paid more then the humanities or social science TAs. I could have really used the extra cash.

Oh, and mandating diversity training in order to get the pay bump of experienced status.

I remember the year the state made an offer and the TAA negotiated that the T.A.s would get what the state offered, plus six hours of nominally paid sexual and racial harassment training. I say "nominally paid" because in reality it was unpaid, since there was no real reduction in other responsibilities.

The key lessons I remember are that if a student says they will "do anything" to pass the course, the proper action is not to get up and shut the office door and that it was very, very, very important for me to have a gender neutral writing standard for my calculus students. Let me emphasize the importance of the gender neutral writing standard.

Well, those and the fact that the union viewed its primary duty as negotiating to create "jobs" for right thinking union toadies who could create and run laughable classes at the expense of the actual people they were supposed to represent.

My other fond memory of the TAA was when I discovered that they notified non-union T.A.s of their right to not have money deducted from their paychecks spent for political purposes via a note buried inside the union newsletter placed in T.A. mailboxes during finals week just before Christmas. All you had to do was send a letter to their office prior to Jan. 15 of the following year. Assuming you, a non-union member, opened and read the union newsletter in the middle of finals grading or during the break afterwards and acted in time.

I deleted and reposted to correct a couple of grammar/spelling errors that were bugging me.

What sort of opportunities for exploitation of TAs does this open up? Can we skip the 8 hours of mandatory training/instruction? Can we accept offers from students who volunteer to TA for free to get experience?

Faced with some of the hurdles that confront most small businesses, they quit.

Proving once and for all these people have no sense of what it's like to operate a business.

Union leaders said that they couldn’t function well if they had to effectively be in a perpetual organizing drive for the annual union votes, and also if they had to pay annual fees to be certified. "Our membership was keenly aware of the sort of resources and energy it would take in order to hold on," said Adrienne Pagac, co-president of the union and a doctoral student in sociology at Madison....

Oh, Unions lie like rugs. I was in Ralph's grocery at the deli counter and the two (union) employees were talking about the recent strike vote. Neither of them wanted to strike; both of them and about 20 people they had talked to voted not to strike; the union leadership is putting out press releases saying 90% favor a strike. Hmmm.

At the time, an experienced TA was one with (I think) 2 semesters of experience. While it's true, I spent way too much time in graduate school most of it was on an RA, so it was hanging out at the synchrotron, instead of grading lab assignments.

I would think regardless of graduation velocity, 3 semesters of TAing wouldn't be uncommon.

Are any pro-union critics actually arguing, "Yeah, after a single certification vote is won, there shouldn't be regular/annual elections (unless a formal de-cert' vote sought and won). Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying."

Read the comments at the source article. It's interesting how the union goons avoid this topic:

- The first comment is a detailed cry of pro-Walker triumph.

- Several later comments attack the first, but not a single one of them makes the "missing arguments" I asked about above. No one has the courage to say, "Yeah, dammit, you SHOULDN'T get regular votes to maintain the union's certification. You SHOULD be required to pay in dues money, even if you don't like the union and don't think it's worth the money."

From the article: "Typically, once unions win a vote to represent a bargaining unit, they do not need to return for elections year after year -- if ever."

" how weird that one vote can make a union Permanent without ever needing another vote. Is that how union democracy looks?"

I think that’s how it looks, at least for unions covered by the National Labor Relations Act. For thsse, thirty percent of those represented by the bargaining unit must sign a petition before the NLRB will consider a decertification election.

I've been wondering about that. Given the SCOTUS' expansive view of the Commerce Clause, why hasn't someone challenged the states' rights to enact labor law? Don't these laws have a huge aggregate effect on interstate commerce?

purplepenquin said...From what I understand, there are some things...like work stoppages/slowdowns...that may be illegal for "unions" to take part in, but nothing much can be down to "associations" that do 'em.

You are obviously implying that the TAs will do this sort of thing. What you are missing is that there will be no union buffering them from the university firing them. They would be under intense pressure to do so.

"purplepenquin said...From what I understand, there are some things...like work stoppages/slowdowns...that may be illegal for "unions" to take part in, but nothing much can be down to "associations" that do 'em."

"purplepenquin said...From what I understand, there are some things...like work stoppages/slowdowns...that may be illegal for "unions" to take part in, but nothing much can be down to "associations" that do 'em.

"You are obviously implying that the TAs will do this sort of thing. What you are missing is that there will be no union buffering them from the university firing them. They would be under intense pressure to do so."

sarge here most of them public unions is not reserting cuz then they can negotiate for whatever they need beyond cost of livin wage increases to an the agencies for which these employees work will have to sit down wiv em evn if not required to by law